In 2008, the United States imported 11 million barrels of oil per day. Today it produces 13.6 million — more than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. That sentence would have been considered delusional in 2008.
In January 2024, the Biden administration paused all pending LNG export approvals. The stated reason: environmental review. The unstated consequence: the United States chose the moment directly before the worst energy crisis in history to stop building the infrastructure that every allied government would spend 2026 desperately trying to buy.
The Iran war did not create American energy dominance. It revealed it — to every government in the world simultaneously, in the most expensive demonstration in history. The market was right. The policy was wrong. The gap between those two things is what allied governments are now paying to close.
The Brief
The United States is now producing more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. US crude output reached 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025 — a record. In 2008, the US was producing roughly 5 million bpd and importing 11 million. The shale revolution — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, developed by private sector engineers, not government planners — closed that gap in less than 15 years.
In 2025, the US became the first country to export more than 100 million metric tons of LNG in a single year. LNG exports rose from 0.5 Bcf/d in 2016 to 15.0 Bcf/d in 2025 — a 30x increase in nine years. The US now supplies one-third of all LNG traded globally. Europe receives 68% of US LNG volumes, up from 34% before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In January 2024, the Biden administration paused all pending LNG export approvals — citing environmental concerns. The pause lasted until Trump reversed it on his first day in office, January 20, 2025. QatarEnergy remained the primary alternative for European LNG supply. QatarEnergy is now under force majeure after Ras Laffan was struck.
Venture Global is up 92% year-to-date. Williams Companies raised its dividend for the 52nd consecutive year and reported record EBITDA of $7.75 billion in 2025. The market is not pricing a commodity cycle. It is pricing infrastructure that allied governments now treat as strategic.
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